Computer and communication technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace. Indeed, computer and communication technologies are involved in many aspects of a person's day. For example, many devices being used today by consumers have a small computer incorporated within the device. These small computers come in varying sizes and degrees of sophistication. These small computers may vary in sophistication from one microcontroller to a fully-functional complete computer system. For example, small computers may be a one-chip computer, such as a microcontroller, a one-board type of computer, such as a controller, a typical desktop computer, such as an IBM-PC compatible, etc.
A scanner is a device that may be used in connection with one or more computing devices. In typical operation, a scanner analyzes an image (such as a photograph, printed text, or handwriting) and converts it to a digital image. The processing of scanning may involve moving a light-sensitive device across an image-bearing surface (such as a page of text), converting the light and dark areas on the surface to binary digits that can be interpreted by computer. Scanners may also analyze other surfaces, such as non-linear surfaces, electronic data (e.g., microscopic), radio and telemetric data, auditory and visual information, etc.
Different kinds of computer software facilitate the use of scanning devices. The computer or computing device that is used to scan the materials may have one or more pieces of software running on the computer that enable it to send the necessary information to the scanning device to enable the materials to be scanned. If the computer or computing device is on a computer network there may be one or more pieces of software running on one or more computers on the computer network that facilitate scanning.
A variety of multi-function peripheral (MFP) devices and standalone scanners support direct scanning to a network-connected client. A growing number of these devices also support some form of automated post-processing workflow (e.g., OCR, index, Bates stamping, 3D simulation, etc.) on the scan data as part of the scan operation. Benefits may be realized by providing increased functionality to the software used in facilitating direct scanning to a network-connected client.